Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
BELLATRIX
Idropped to my knees, yanking Casper’s boxers down with me, and stared up at him through my lashes. He smiled, and I shook my head and pushed back to my feet before he got the idea this was going somewhere it wasn’t.
I wasn’t horny anymore. I was fucking annoyed.
I kicked each of his legs farther apart and moved aside to get a better look at him. There were only so many places a little piece of paper could be hiding on someone’s person, and something told me it wouldn’t be inside any of the usual suspects.
Or who knows? Maybe the fucker wanted my hand digging around in his asshole. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I stepped around his spread feet, ducking under his raised arms, and took in every inch of his bare skin.
My eyes scanning over the water droplets trickling along the intricate tattoos, the hidden and not-so-hidden surgical scars, the healed-over burns, the old cylindrical bullet wounds, the occasional mole, and everything in-between.
It was hard to find anything that appeared out of place when all of it appeared out of place. Like a fucked-up roadmap of someone’s more fucked-up life.
By the time I made it back around to the front of his body, he was grinning at me. His nostrils flaring when his lips tugged up and to the sides. There was nothing up there that I could see. Nothing behind his ears either.
I grabbed his wrist and scraped a nail between each of his fingers. I repeated the process with his toes before stepping around to his back for a second time. Running a hand down his spine to the little divots above his ass.
I swear they were winking at me.
“How’d you get this one again?” I tapped on the oldest, most-jagged scar on his back. The one that, judging by how faded it was compared to the others, seemed to have been there the longest. The first scar if I were to bet on it.
He didn’t move or pull away when I ran the pad of my thumb over the raised skin. He did freeze, though. Which was practically the same thing. Sometimes someone’s tell was when they did nothing at all. Especially someone who was constantly doing something.
He turned his head to the side and flicked his eyes in my direction.
He was still grinning but I could tell it was more forced this time.
There was no humor, no spark behind it. What there was, was a shit-ton of deflection.
“Let’s just say it took me a few tries to finally land that trick on the bike. ”
He was lying. Just like he was lying when he told me that story about his cousin and jumping off the roof. My guess was, whatever happened to his back, it was a lot more personal than he was willing to let on. With me or anyone else.
It was hard not to be curious about it. And not because I cared. But because he cared about keeping it a secret.
“So, you find it yet or you giving up already?” Casper asked.
Ignoring his taunting, I lowered onto my haunches.
Tracing a finger over his ass crack, between his cheeks, before finally biting the bullet and digging deeper.
He didn’t clench, which made it much easier to fish around and find nothing.
He did, however, grab his cock and start stroking it from base to tip.
I reached around and slapped his hand away, and he leaned back to look at me again. “You’re more than welcome to do it yourself, babe. But you can’t shove a finger up a guy’s ass and expect him not to wanna get off afterwards.”
He was trying to distract me. The same way I’d been trying to distract him when I was asking about his scar. His attempt didn’t work any better than mine did. I wanted that little piece of paper… if only to prove to him that I could find it.
I was competitive. I hated losing almost as much as I hated the fucker currently wiggling his dick in my direction like it was a lasso.
I wiped my hands off on his white towel and took another long look at his upper torso—at least he showered first—stepping up behind him and cupping his balls.
He groaned, and I cursed. There was nothing between these either.
Or tucked into his arm pits, adhered to the bottoms of his feet, threaded into his hair…
I grabbed on to his jaw and forced it open, using the tiny flashlight I kept attached to my bike keys to scope out the roof of his mouth, his cheeks, and under his tongue.
When I stuck my finger inside to rub it along the top of his teeth—yes, the same finger I stuck up his ass—he licked at my hand and grinned wider.
One of us was disgusted, and it wasn’t him.
I tugged my arm away, and he continued to run his tongue over his teeth, under the top lip until a little plastic baggy appeared on the tip. Then he flipped it around the inside of his mouth a few times before popping his tongue back out.
“Come collect your prize, babe,” he mumbled without bothering to close his mouth.
I swiped the little baggy off his tongue, pushed on the sides until the seal broke, and dug the tiny piece of paper out with the tip of a fingernail. He had to fold it a million times to make it fit, but he wasn’t fucking with me. It was another one of Vee’s diary pages.
I shoved it into my pants pocket and huffed. “I fucking hate you, you know.”
“No, you don’t,” he said as he pulled his boxers back up his legs and shoved his arms through the t-shirt he’d dropped on the floor. “Now, let’s go before I keep making you dig around for the one you missed.”